Wednesday, March 15, 2006

CapAsia IV

Hope you are doing well.I was in Sri Lanka last January.All houses have been handed over to Kalametiya residents just before the one-year anniversary of the tsunami.Wes and I visited Kalametiya in August last year with a faculty member from the University of Oregon and a PhD students from UC Davis.Wes's studio just completed some designs for the community center (or the communal area) of Kalametiya.I met Utpal and the Belgians we saw in Ahmedabad in Colombo in January (2006).Mansee is studying at Cambridge (UK).Enjoy this blog-space and keep everyone informed of what you are doing.

1 Comments:

CAPAsia incited in me a great appreciation for the coexistence of self-sufficiency and learning from and about other cultures.

My experiences challenged me to give my actions meaning, to question how and why things are made, and make healthy choices for my body, my society, and my planet.

I see my home very differently now; Indiana poses a lot of opportunities for education and environmentalism. I do believe that anyone here could encounter situations that help one to see his or her world in a new way, such as I did - but those opportunities to step out of an American way of thinking are so rare that it's nearly impossible.

I had thought that I was interested in living in different places with different traditions so that I could become a composite of interesting traditions and thought - as well as materials. This idea of composing myself of different cultures was useless, I find that travel is much more about awakening, rejuvenating, and embellishing those traditions and ideas that already existed in oneself and home.

It is common and wrong to think of travel and consumerism as a pair, for one does not 'consume' a nation and just break away. It is beneficial to learn and teach.